International Certified Environmental Product Declaration

Cut-off criteria

ISO 14044:2006 and the focus PCR requires the LCA model to contain a minimum of 95% of the total inflows (mass and energy) to the upstream and core modules be included in this study. The cut-off criteria were applied to all other processes unless otherwise noted above as follows. A 1% cut-off is considered for all renewable and non-renewable primary energy consumption and the total mass of inputs within a unit process where the total of the neglected inputs does not exceed 5%.

Data Sources and Data Quality Assessment

The following statements explain how the above facility requirements/generation were derived:

• Raw material transport: The facility is situated in Jiaxing City, about 100 km from Shanghai in Zhejiang Province in China. The facility sources wet logs of European Oak and Eucalyptus from France and Nanning, China respectively. European logs are shipped to the port of Shanghai and are transported to Jiaxing City using trucks. Sawn and dried Veneers of American Walnut, American Hickory and Short-Leaf Acacia are purchased from an existing market in Jiaxing and transported to the facility using small trucks. Through the sources at facility, it is known that American Walnut logs and American Hickory logs were imported from the USA and Short-Leaf Acacia from Taiwan before being sawn into veneers and purchased by the facility. Hence, these transportation distances have been accounted for in this EPD. Various chemicals used for painting and finishing are manufactured by PPG Industries in Tianjin, China or locally bought from Jiaxing City or Shanghai and transported to the facility using medium size trucks.

• Electricity: The majority of the facility operations (such as sawing, drying, etc.) are dependent on the use of medium-voltage electricity generated and supplied by the Zhejiang province. The factory’s energy consumptions during a period of one year were determined from their monthly utlility bills. Since, the products of Allwood Group only form a small part of total floorings manufactured at the facility, the energy consumption for the declared products was calculated by dividing the annual electrical consumption by the annual square meter of flooring produced and multiplying by the flooring produced for Allwood Group.

• Process/space heating: The facility generates its own heat from boilers installed on-site which are fueled by the wood waste. The woodwaste (such as bark and hogfuel) is converted to chips and mixed with sawdust to be sent to boilers for incineration and heat generation through steam. Standard assumptions of 8% bark, 9.3% saw dust, 25% slabwood and 1% shavings by mass were used to calculate the wood waste being generated during debarking, sawing, drying, plywood production and finishing at site. The facility had intimated about 10% sawdust being sold and the remaining being mixed with woodchips before sending it to the boiler for powering the mesh belt dryer and plywood hot press. No fossil fuel (such as Natural gas, diesel or gasoline) is used at site to heat the facility or any of its components.

• Fuel required for machinery: Diesel tractor-trailer trucks were used for resource transportation at site. Other forms of on-site machinery include woodchipper, mobile cranes, conveyor belts, dumpers, forklifts, loaders and generators. Energy requirements for machinery were based on diesel purchase receipts by the facility over a period of 12 months and dividing it by the quantity of products manufactured for Allwood Group.

• Waste generation: The facility processes wood waste on-site by chipping the bark and hogfuel into woodchips and mixing it with saw dust before sending it to the boilers for incineration for heat generation. The facility also employs a sewage treatment plant at site and treats up to 18,000 m3 of wastewater on-site. The remaining sewage is sent to the municipal wastewater treatment plants through underground pipelines.

• Recovered energy: Recovered energy (both on and off-site) was measured based on volume and energy estimates based on business-as-usual processes carried out at the facility.

• Recycled/reused material/components: The average weight of cardboard was found to be 130g/m2 through literature and the facility packages an average of 2.44m2 of flooring in one box. The overall packaging weight was calculated based on this data. These carboard boxes are opened by end-use customers in the USA and recycled off-site in the municipal recycling facilities. The US EPA report: Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2018 Fact Sheet (US EPA 2020) states that 96.5% of corrugated boxes are recycled and this assumption has been used to model the municipal recycling rates.

• Module A1 material losses: Through facility records, it was found that about 5% of logs procured from France and Nanning are either lost during transportation or are unusable decayed/diseased wood. A 1% of loss during transmission of water and electricity supply and during treatment of wastewater is also assumed.

• Direct A3 emissions accounting: The facility did not keep any track of their on-site emissions and hence ecoinvent unit processes for bio-energy generation and plywood production were utilised. Ammonia fuming is carried out in an air-tight room to maintain temperature and pressure requirements of the process. The ammonia fumes are passed through a scrubber having 99% efficiency which captures the fumes and converts it into liquid ammonia to be re-used later. Hence, ammonia off-gasing emissions were estimated to be 1% of total ammonia used for the process. VOC emissions for production stage were retrieved from the FloorScore report available with the facility and hence the VOC emissions were determined in accordance to “Standard Method for the Testing and Evaluation of Volatile Organic Chemical Emissions from Indoor Sources using Environmental Chambers- version 1.2” CA Specification 01350.

• A4 Product transport requirements: Once, the flooring is manufactured and ready for shipping to the USA, large trucks (Class 7) are utilized to transport the flooring to the Shanghai Port and onwards to Portland, Oregon, USA in a ship. According to the data from the company’s sale records during this time, 85% of All Wood Group’s customers resided within 1000 miles and 33% within 200 miles of their storage unit in Tualatin, Oregon.

• A5 product installation: Installation of wood flooring should be carried out based on accompanying guidelines or using NWFA Installation guidelines (NWFA 2019). These guidelines detail the type of processing, machinery, tools, dust extraction equipment, auxiliary materials, etc. to be used during the installation of engineered wood flooring. VOC emissions for installation and use phase were unavailable with the manufacturer since the installation and refurbishment methods are greatly varied and dependent upon a number of consumer-specific elements. Hence, VOC emissions assumptions were based on labels of products used for such work (Roberts 1407 TDS).

• B product use phase: There are no electricity, water or material consumptions associated with the Use phase of this product. Weekly sweeping/mopping procedures are recommended for maintenance and long life of the product. Repair and replacement of this product is dependent upon its wear and tear during its use. Chipping or scratches might occur due to rough use and should be repaired accordingly. Estimated Service Life (ESL) for engineered wood flooring manufactured by Allwood Group is 100 years with re-finishing required every 25 years. The refurbishment process includes sanding and finshing has been modelled as per the NWFA guidelines for refurbishment (NWFA 2016). The refurbishment of engineered flooring may involve products which include VOCs and hence the manufacturer’s guide must be used to make the necessary repair. Proper PPE should be worn when installing, sanding, and finishing wood products including ear, eye, and respiratory protection to avoid excess exposure to wood dust. Other suggested protection includes knee pads and rubber gloves. Finish and adhesives, if applicable, should meet low VOC requirements.

• C product end-of-life: Based on the data from the US EPA report: Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2018 Fact Sheet (US EPA 2020), the amount of wood products recycled is negligible (~0%) whereas combustion accounts for 18% and landfill disposal for 82% for wood waste generated. As per the PCR, waste processing sites were assumed to be 161km away from building sites and diesel-powered trucks were assumed to be used to transport the waste engineered wood flooring.

The following tables depict a list of assumed life cycle inventory utilized in the LCA modeling to generate the impact results across the life cycle modules in scope. An assessment of the quality of each LCI activities utilized from various sources is also provided.

Data Quality Assessment

Data quality/variability requirements, as specified in the PCR, are applied. This section describes the achieved data quality relative to the ISO 14044:2006 requirements. Data quality is judged based on its precision (measured, calculated or estimated), completeness (e.g., unreported emissions), consistency (degree of uniformity of the methodology applied within a study serving as a data source) and representativeness (geographical, temporal, and technological).

Precision: Through measurement and calculation, the manufacturers collected and provided primary data on their annual production. For accuracy, the LCA practitioner and 3rd Party Verifier validated the plant gate-to-gate data.

Completeness: All relevant specific processes, including inputs (raw materials, energy and ancillary materials) and outputs (emissions and production volume) were considered and modeled to represent the specified and declared products. The majority of relevant background materials and processes were taken from ecoinvent v3.6 LCI datasets where relatively recent region-specific electricity inputs were utilized. The most relevant EPDs requiring key A1 inputs were also utilized where readily available.

Consistency: To ensure consistency, the same modeling structure across the respective product systems was utilized for all inputs, which consisted of raw material inputs and ancillary material, energy flows, water resource inputs, product and co-products outputs, returned and recovered Flooring materials, emissions to air, water and soil, and waste recycling and treatment. The same background LCI datasets from the ecoinvent v3.6 database were used across all product systems. Crosschecks concerning the plausibility of mass and energy flows were continuously conducted. The LCA team conducted mass and energy balances at the plant and selected process level to maintain a high level of consistency.

Reproducibility: Internal reproducibility is possible since the data and the models are stored and available in a machine readable project file for all foreground and background processes, and in P3 Optima’s proprietary Flooring LCA calculator* for all production facility and product-specific calculations. A considerable level of transparency is provided throughout the detailed LCA report as the specifications and material quantity make-up for the declared products are presented and key primary and secondary LCI data sources are summarized. The provision of more detailed publicly accessible data to allow full external reproducibility was not possible due to reasons of confidentiality.

*P3 Optima has developed a proprietary tool that allows the calculation of PCR-compliant LCA results for Flooring product designs. The tool auto-calculates results by scaling base-unit technosphere inputs (i.e. 1 kg sand, 1 kWh electricity, etc.) to replicate the reference flow conversions that take place in any typical LCA software like openLCA or SimaPro. The tool was tested against several LCAs performed in openLCA and the tool generated identical results to those realized in openLCA across every impact category and inventory metric (where comparisons could be readily made).

Representativeness: The representativeness of the data is summarized as follows.

• Time related coverage of the manufacturing processes’ primary collected data from 2019-11-01 to 2020-10-31.
• Upstream (background) LCI data was either the PCR specified default (if applicable) or more appropriate LCI datasets as found in the country-adjusted ecoinvent v3.6 database.
• Geographical coverage for inputs required by the A3 facility(ies) is representative of its region of focus; other upstream and background processes are based on US, North American, or global average data and adjusted to regional electricity mixes when relevant.
• Technological coverage is typical or average and specific to the participating facilities for all primary data.